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Updated Aug. 5, 2005 12:01 a.m. ET

INCENDIARY By Chris Cleave (Knopf, 237 pages, $22.95)

The opening sentence in Chris Cleave's debut novel sets the tone for a story that is seemingly (as they say) ripped from the headlines: "Dear Osama they want you dead or alive so the terror will stop."

The book is told in the form of a chatty, spottily punctuated and society-observing letter to Mr. bin Laden from a working-class woman whose husband and young son...